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Captured on Film: Tony-winning Performances on DVD
By Gerard Raymond

In the Sun

A Tony for Tony

Bialystock and Bloom

Rockin' at the Tonys

My Fair Lady (1957)

God of Carnage (2009)

Theatre is an ephemeral medium, and it's impossible to experience a legendary performance once the show has closed. However, in many cases American Theatre Wing Tony Award®-winning actors eventually re-created their roles in Hollywood versions of the plays and musicals that brought them acclaim. Other shows were taped for television.

We thought you might also like to catch up with, or re-live the memory of, some Tony-winning performances of the past. Here's a handy list of those that were captured on video, or re-imagined for film. All of them are currently available on DVD. Clicking on any of the titles listed will take you to Amazon.com. At the end of this article, you'll find a list of the Best Plays and Best Musicals that were adapted for film or television.

Tony, Meet Oscar

Let's begin with the Tony Award-winners who went on to win Academy Awards for playing the same role on film.

Four years after Paul Scofield received the 1962 Tony for Best Actor for playing Sir Thomas Moore in Robert Bolt's historical drama A Man for All Seasons, he walked away with an Oscar for the same role in the much acclaimed movie version of the play. (Did you catch the 2008 Broadway revival starring Frank Langella?)

Rex Harrison, Tony-winner for Best Actor in a Musical in 1957, received an Oscar for memorably recreating Henry Higgins in George Cukor's 1964 blockbuster version of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady.

Joel Grey received the double honors for playing the Emcee in Kander and Ebb's Cabaret.

Yul Brynner, who received his Tony for Featured Actor in 1952 for his performance in The King and I, went on to receive an Oscar in the lead category for the 1956 movie version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

For his performance as the great swashbuckler in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, actor José Ferrer received a Best Actor Tony in 1947 and then bagged an Oscar for recreating the role in the 1950 film version.

Anne Bancroft's 1960 Tony-winning Best Actress performance as Helen Keller's teacher Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker earned her an Oscar when she reprised it on screen.

And in an interesting twist, Russian-born French actress Lila Kedrova won an Oscar for playing Madame Hortense in the 1964 movie Zorba the Greek, and then went on to win a Tony for the same role in the 1984 musical version, Zorba.

Recent Favorites

Moving to Tony winning performances from the past few years, 2007's Best Actor in a Play, Frank Langella, impersonated the troubled former US President for a second time in the movie version of Frost/Nixon.

Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, respectively, repeated their Best Actress and Featured Actress Tony winning roles, along with several other members of the 2004 Broadway revival cast, including Sean Combs, in the 2008 television movie version of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

The Tony-winning performances of Nathan Lane as shyster showman Max Bialystock and Gary Beach as the flamboyant stage director Roger de Bris can be seen in the 2005 movie version of The Producers, the new Mel Brooks musical. Past-winner Matthew Broderick also recreates his role as accountant Leo Bloom.

Richard Griffiths (Best Actor 2006) as the beleaguered professor and Best Featured Actress Frances de la Tour as the only woman on the faculty, along with most of the original cast of Alan Bennett's The History Boys repeat their roles in the movie version.

Shuler Hensley was featured as Jud Fry in the 1998 London production of Oklahoma! That staging was taped for television before it came to Broadway where Hensley reprised his role and nabbed a Tony in 2002.

Most of the original cast of Rent recreated their roles for the musical's feature film, including Wilson Jermaine Heredia who won a 1996 Tony Award for his "angelic" performance (as Angel Dumott Schunard).

Tuneful Classics

You can catch musical theatre icon and multiple Tony winner Angela Lansbury in her 1979 Best Actress Tony winning performance as Mrs. Lovett in a taped version of the first national tour of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opposite George Hearn (Tony-winner Len Cariou's Broadway replacement). Similarly, a television version of Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods captures Joanna Gleason's 1988 Tony-winning performance as the Baker's Wife.

If these whet your appetite for more great Tony-winning musical performances of yesteryear, consider the following:

The Play's the Thing

On the dramatic side, a series of Hollywood versions of plays feature Tony-winning performances re-imagined for the screen: You won't want to miss James Earl Jones' breakout in The Great White Hope, or his co-star Jane Alexander's 1969 Featured Actress Tony-winning performance; 1983 winner Harvey Fierstein's tour de force as a drag queen with pride and dignity in Torch Song Trilogy; or Beryl Reid's ground-breaking 1967 performance as a lesbian television soap star in The Killing of Sister George. There's also a film version of Ralph Bellamy (1958 Tony) as a young F.D.R. in Sunrise at Campobello, and one of I Am A Camera - the play that was later musicalized as Cabaret - starring Julie Harris (1952 Tony).

According to the old adage, there are no small roles in the theatre. Tony-winners in the featured categories have certainly left indelible marks in theatregoers' memory. A number of them have been preserved on film:

The 1981 Featured Actress in a Play winner Swoosie Kurtz recreated her role in Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July videotaped for the PBS American Playhouse series, and Jeffrey Wright (1994) became the only original cast member to join the star-studded cast of HBO's cable television version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. John Glover (1995) played both a good and evil twin in Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!, and Rita Moreno (1975) starred as a wannabe chanteuse in The Ritz, McNally's gay bathhouse farce, which was turned into a movie the following year.

A film series titled American Film Theater was responsible for the preservation of several Tony winning performances. These screen re-creations of notable stage productions of the 1960s and '70s were released in cinemas as a limited-run subscription series in the mid-1970s.

And speaking of everybody's beloved aunt, let's remember the recently departed comedienne Bea Arthur through her memorable 1966 Tony-winning featured performance as the martini-tossing, wise-cracking Vera Charles in the movie version of the Jerry Herman musical Mame.

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Film and Television Adaptations of Tony Award-Winning Best Musicals and Best Plays